Dual alyer will be 8.4GB/8.5GB discs, but you will need new burning hardware and software for it. However, Blue laser systems will be available at a similar price hopefully within the year, so i would rather go for them with 25GB+ space, than a dual layer disc.

I really think that dual-layer DVDR's are going to take off in a big way. Consider the market forces involved. Virtually 1:1 movie backups? There's going to be an awful lot of demand pushing hardware and media prices down.

I can see blu-ray being a very slow starter. It will mean more hardware upgrades for your PC. Not just a new reader/writer, but your hard drive also (120GB will hold fewer than 5 blu-ray discs).

I'm also guessing that blu-ray recording speeds are going to top-out at somewhere over the 40MB/sec mark (16X DVD is about 20MB/s, assume blu-ray pit-length is at least half of DVD), meaning you'll be wanting a well-tuned machine to host your blu-ray recorder.

Personally, I'd be looking to use a SCSI system in a blu-ray authoring machine. ATA/SATA would work, but would be prone to interruptions from user activity (loading IE, opening an email) with inevitable buffer underruns. Of course, a 'burn-proof' like system would safeguard your recording, but we all know that burn-proof activation can introduce its own errors*.

DVD-R (dual and single layer) is going to be around for a very long time. We've got 16X recorders to look forward to, dye improvements, cheaper consumer video recorders, cheaper portable players and perhaps even slight increases in capacity.

* I copied a DVD from a network shared DVD-ROM, which unfortunately could not quite keep up with 4X reading (until about 60%). The pretty pattern introduced onto the recording by the constant activation of the burn-proof system is quite interesting..._X_X_X_X_X_[small]--
Anyone seen my bitch?[/small]

It's all pie in the sky mate. People are not going to change all their hardware and PC specifications just to accomodate dual layer discs when making a 1:1 DVD copy is already here (albeit with a little compression). If you'd studied economics you'd also know that if demand goes up so does the price!

Of course, the Demand/Supply curve. I do expect people to change their hardware. I for one will be as soon as blue laser becomes viable. For people like me with large screens who demand the highest quality, it is needed and compression isnt an option. Even a DVD that isnt compressed needs to be progressively scanned to look anyway high quality on my 60 inch screen.

I can tell the difference on anything that is compressed by around 10% even with deep analysis on our 32" Pansonic. I hope HD DVD will become a reality soon and i hope it will be in a form of supporting DVD-R playback also. This may mean dual units in a DVD Standalone

Well actually some brand name discs still do cost $5 but it is true that competition will drive prices down but it will take quite a while and to start with when demand rises prices stay high since companies want to make as much profit as possible. The only reason prices come down is because more businesses want a share of the market and that also usually means compromises on quality. I still think changes will be very slow with this new technology - it is not automatic that the demand is there as the case of picture-messaging mobile phones have proved.